Diversity & transparency of funding

Africa Check is a non-profit organisation, headquartered in South Africa as a non-profit Trust, registration number IT000728/2015(C). It is registered as Africa Check Foundation in Kenya and operates in Nigeria and Senegal through representative offices. Founded in London in 2012 as a Community Interest Company, control of the organisation passed to the SA-registered Trust at the start of 2019. Information on 2012-2017 accounts is available on this link at UK Companies House. 2018 accounts will be added once audited. 2019 accounts will be published in South Africa.

Our commitment since we were launched in 2012 with just one funder – the Vienna-based International Press Institute – has been to increase and diversify the number of our financial supporters, to ensure that no donor has a controlling influence. In 2014, a small group of foundations and trusts provided 100% of our income. In 2018, that group has grown and diversified and earned income and corporate sponsors account for 17% of income. As verified by the IFCN’s independent assessment of our work each year, we ensure that funders have no influence over the conclusions we reach in our reports.

Africa Check’s mission and work is supported by TRI Facts (PTY) Ltd, our training and research business unit, registered in South Africa as (Registration number (2018/623180/07)

How we spend it

Fact-checking is a time-consuming and labour-intensive business. Operating in four countries and with offices now in Johannesburg, Nairobi, Lagos and Dakar, we are expanding in 2019 to a team of 30, with 17 researchers, fact-checking claims, and 13 staff in our programmes training and supporting the growth of fact-checking across Africa and running our own operation.

Our funders 2018

For the financial year 2018, our draft financial figures show a total income of $1,348,104 (£1,061,499), up from $951,573 (£749,270) the previous year. The breakdown of income by source is as follows (rounded to nearest percentage).

Income since 2012

Since 2012 our income has increased as follows, thanks to the fabulous support we receive from a growing range of partners, enabling us to extend our work in South Africa and open and expand our operations to Kenya, Nigeria and Senegal, as well as operating awards and training programmes to promote fact-checking more widely.

Putting Africa Check on track for the future

We want Africa Check to be around for a long time to ensure we can continue to play our part in scrutinising the claims that public figures, institutions and the media make, and supporting others who do the same.

To do that, we need to put our finances on a sound long-term footing and, as a first step, we launched in 2015 TRI Facts, our Training, Research & Information services unit. At the same time, we have started to reach out to our readers and supporters for their support too. Together, we hope to build up this support to account for more than 25% of our total revenue in 2019. Doing this as we expand our operations around the continent is ambitious. But doing it should indeed help to put Africa Check on track to a long-term future.

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We hold public figures accountable

For democracy to function, public figures need to be held to account for what they say. The claims they make need to be checked, openly and impartially. Africa Check is an independent, non-partisan organisation which assesses claims made in the public arena using journalistic skills and evidence drawn from the latest online tools, readers, public sources and experts, sorting fact from fiction and publishing the results.